Hazleton and Lingo Jingo

I read the two articles about Hazleton first. I enjoyed them - I generally like the way ideas are presented in a very factual way in newspaper articles. However, I think the mayor is a complete ass. While in theory this may be a good law, it will clearly only end up being discriminatory and racist. Also, declaring the official language to be English bothers me a lot. I don't think we should have an official language. I think we should be able to speak whatever and however we want. The president, after all, doesn't speak English. He speaks something like... out his ass. However, I do agree that illegal immigration isn't very good. It's not fair to all of us tax paying citizens (maybe we could get rid of taxes and the problem would be solved... haven't thought of that one have you?), but I'm not sure it's the entire problem in Hazleton. I think it's more likely that the people in Hazleton were unhappy with the recent increase of crime, and the mayor, in an effort to appear as though he was doing something to solve this problem, lashed out at the illegal immigrants. But is it really possible that they're entirely to blame? Will this new law actually do more good than bad? I'm not so sure...
As for the third piece, Lingo Jingo, I found it to be very interesting. I really enjoyed Geoffrey Nunberg’s writing style and many of the ideas that he presented. However, this article is a little out of date, having been printed in 1997 and it makes me wonder how the essay would be different if it were being written now.
Here's one point that I've been thinking about since our last class. One of the issues that was raised after Mahoney asked the question, "Why do we care?" was that people speaking other languages is a threat to us and to our culture. However, I want to ask, how can that possibly be seen as a threat? Culture, in my mind, is always changing. Certainly culture is largely related to old traditions that have been set into stone and will never change, but that is not entirely what it is. Our culture was not the same when our country was first founded as it is today. Why are we fighting the change now? Instead, why can't we embrace and adopt other cultures as new people immigrate to our nation?
Anyway, that was just one thing that I wanted to bring up. It makes sense to me, but probably no one else. I just don't think it's right for us to say that when you move to the United States you need to become American and speak English and all that. However, I definitely think that if there is an "English-only" law passed, it should be required that all Americans speak English correctly, since none of us do now. But I hope that never happens; we do live in "The Land of the Free" after all...